"We want to live inahealthy environment. But we want to eat too."
took over, there was no more money for con
servation. The sea came in. Now my nursery is
just a mud bank."
WHILE
DUTCH RULE during the days of
the plantations had often been harsh,
in more recent times it was so gener
ous that the colony came to enjoy the
highest standard of living in South
America. Indeed, at the time of independence,
there was so much pessimism about a future
without the Dutch that 40,000 Surinamers,
nearly half the workforce, chose the option of
Dutch citizenship and moved to the Nether
lands. Many who left were from the profes
sional classes, and the brain drain worsened
an already bad economy.
Among those who eventually opted for life in
the Netherlands was Roy Tjin, a Surinamese
photographer of Chinese descent, who was back
for a visit and took me one evening to meet his
friend Agnes Chandansingh in her posh Para
maribo neighborhood. Chandansingh's mother
was a Hindu, her father a Roman Catholic, and,
like many Hindustanis, they worked hard and
saved, helping to make their community the
most economically stable in the country.
Still, things in Suriname are not as Chan
dansingh would like them to be-or as they
once were. "We have so many resources, and so
few people. But still we're poor," she said as we
sat in her garden beneath a full moon, drinking
tea. "Since independence, I've actually seen
people grow poorer."
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, JUNE 2000